Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra music director Michael Butterman says the final works of Richard Strauss, his "Four Last Songs" ("Vier letzte Lieder") contain some of the most moving, beautiful music he can imagine. Written for soprano voice and orchestra in 1948, when the composer was 84 and in the last year of his life, the songs are a perfect union of poetry and orchestration, Butterman said.

The Phil closes the second program of its current concert season Saturday night at Macky Auditorium with the Strauss songs, honoring the 150th anniversary of his birth. Butterman explored a different side of Strauss earlier this year. As guest conductor of the Colorado Music Festival's season-opening concert in June, Butterman conducted two early Strauss works.

Joining the Phil is renowned concert soprano Twyla Robinson, who appeared as the Countess in Opera Colorado's 2012 production of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro."

"I absolutely love Twyla," Butterman said.

The two have multiple professional connections. They attended Indiana University together, and Robinson sang as a "ringer" in a church choir Butterman was conducting. She is also a native of Louisiana and attended Centenary College in Shreveport as an undergraduate. Butterman is music director of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra and makes his primary home in that city.

Robinson also told the Camera of her love for the Strauss songs.

"It's just one example of a composer giving us something incredibly special at the end of his life," said the soprano, who made reference to Verdi's comic masterpiece "Falstaff," also written when the composer was in his 80s.

Both Robinson and Butterman talked about Strauss quoting one of his earliest masterpieces, the tone poem "Tod und Verklaerung" ("Death and Transfiguration") in one of the songs.

"It sums up his view of life and death," Robinson said. "He returns to the early work, where he depicts man going from earthly life to the afterlife after a struggle to resist death. It has a poignancy that sends a chill up the spine."

"In the Strauss songs, the voice becomes another instrument," she said. "I started out as a horn player before moving to singing, and I love the feeling of being just a part of the orchestra. I start by practicing the music without the text to help me with that feeling."

She noted that Strauss was a master at writing for horn and included the instrument prominently in his songs.

Robinson specializes in large works for voices and orchestra, including the gargantuan soprano part in Verdi's "Requiem," along with one of the three soprano roles in Mahler's Eighth Symphony.

While she loves doing opera, it is secondary to her work as a concert soloist.

"I was lucky in my career that opportunities lay where my love was," she said. "A lot of singers doing exclusively opera would love to do what I do. You are not portraying a character, you are yourself, and there is immediacy with both the orchestra and the audience."

At Macky, the songs will be performed with English supertitles because the songs are in German. Butterman said he felt it was important for the audience to experience the poetry as it was being sung rather than looking into the program book.

The Strauss songs come at the end of a diverse program with much sonic variety. Unusually, there are five works, including the Strauss, but they are all brief. The concert is titled "Wings and Spirits." Butterman said the "wings" are three birds depicted in music, two legendary and one real but very rare.

"That is also the connection to the 'Legends' theme of the season," he noted.

The first bird is "The White Peacock," a 1915 tone poem by American impressionistic composer Charles Griffes. Another tone poem, "The Swan of Tuonela" by Jean Sibelius (1895), depicts the land of the dead or underworld in Finnish folklore, contributing to the notion of spirituality and transcendence as depicted in the Strauss songs. The last bird is the subject of Stravinsky's "Firebird" Suite of 1910, the longest work on the program.

Butterman noted the variety of ways all three composers use the orchestra.

"They are all colorful but quite different," he said.

The final piece is "Apparition," a short work from 2007 by Michael Udow, retired percussion professor from the University of Michigan who now lives in Longmont. It is performed second, between the Griffes and Stravinsky works. The Sibelius provides a transition to the Strauss songs.

"Apparition" also refers to something spiritual or spectral. It is written for solo timpani and orchestra. Brian Jones, timpanist of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, joins the Phil for the performance.

"It's an effective use of an atypical solo instrument," Butterman said, noting that timpani are the only drums with definite pitch. "Udow takes a theme from Shostakovich's 11th Symphony as a point of departure and also includes quotations from Bach's 'Art of Fugue.' "

This is the first professional performance of the piece, which was premiered by the National Repertory Orchestra, a student ensemble. Jones previously performed it in a chamber version for solo timpani and percussion ensemble. The Phil performance will be recorded at the concert for a compilation disc of Udow's music.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story